The present invention relates to a telephony exchange, a computer program product and a method for controlling a telephone call between two or more items of terminating equipment.
Terminating equipment, such as a phone with a handset and/or a headset, is increasingly being equipped with hands free functionality. This enables parties to a telephone call both to initiate a call and to receive a call without lifting a handset or using the headset by using a microphone and speaker built into the phone.
Similarly, for VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) telephony where one or both parties to a phone call may be employing a computer, they may either use a headset or possibly use speakers and a microphone connected to a sound card incorporated in the computer.
Using the microphone and speaker built into the terminating equipment at one end of a call, however, means that a phone conversation may be overheard at that end of the call, so threatening the privacy of the phone call. As the quality of such hands-free enabled equipment improves, it becomes more and more difficult for one party to determine which type of operation another party at a remote end of a telephone call is employing. Nonetheless, for either security, privacy or personal preference reasons many users want to ensure, for all their conversations, selected conversations or portions of a conversation, that the other party is using the handset or headset in a private mode rather than operating in a public mode where a conversation may be overheard.
In a first aspect, the present invention provides a telephony exchange for establishing a telephone call between two or more items of terminating equipment comprising: a detector for determining an operating mode of an item of said terminating equipment, said mode comprising at least one of a public mode and a private mode, and an indicator, responsive to a determination made by said detector, for providing to at least one other item of said terminating equipment a first indication of the operating mode of said item of terminating equipment.
In a second aspect there is provided a computer program product comprising: a detector for determining an operating mode of an item of said terminating equipment in a telephone call between two or more items of terminating equipment, said mode comprising at least one of a public mode and a private mode, and an indicator, responsive to a determination made by said detector, for providing to at least one other item of said terminating equipment a first indication of the operating mode of said item of terminating equipment.
In a third aspect there is provided a method for controlling a telephone call between two or more items of terminating equipment comprising: determining an operating mode of an item of said terminating equipment, said mode comprising at least one of a public mode and a private mode, and responsive to a determination made in said determining step, providing to at least one other item of said terminating equipment a first indication of the operating mode of said item of terminating equipment.
The present invention allows terminating equipment to indicate whether a telephone call is public, where the telephone conversation may be heard by more than one person at a remote end of a call, or private, where a person at the remote end of a call employs, for example, a handset or a headset.
In a preferred embodiment, a calling party can restrict a called party from holding a call in a public mode if so desired either before or during the call.
In the preferred embodiment, the calling party is provided through their terminating equipment with an up-to-date graphical display, textual display or physical indication of the status of whether the called party is operating in a public mode.
In the preferred embodiment, the called party is also provided through their terminating equipment with an up-to-date graphical display, textual display or physical indication that they should not put a call on speaker, if the calling party has so decided. If the calling party decides during a call to restrict a call to private mode, the calling party""s terminating equipment indicates this and also, if necessary, a prompt is played informing the called party to change to private mode.
The invention is applicable to any terminating equipment including analog and digital telephones with or without displays or multimedia terminals, for example, a computer where the called party, when required, must use a headset rather than computer microphone and speakers.
Using the invention, instead of relying on the quality of the call to determine if a call is public or private, the calling party terminating equipment has a feature that keeps them informed of the status of the call.